An old letter is like a present. Its handwriting is the wrapping paper: before you can see or know the present, you have to unwrap it. The present may be lousy, something you’ll quickly forget. Or it might be something you keep, something you take with you, maybe even something that changes your life. But you’ll never know until you unwrap it.
Sometimes a present is for sharing, like the one-pound chocolate bar in your colleague’s desk drawer. I recently unwrapped such a present –a letter full of delicious nuggets — and want to share it with you because it has lingered in my mind ever since I first read it.
The letter is from William Seymour Tyler, Class of 1830, to his brother Wellington Hart Tyler, Class of 1831. The letter is dated January 30, 1837, when both men were in their mid-twenties. Wellington (apparently nicknamed “Edward”) was principal at an academy in Manlius, New York, while William was at Amherst College teaching Latin and Greek and heading into his glory days as the man whose tardiness inspired the founding of the Philopogonian Society. We often think of Edward Hitchcock, professor and president, as the emblem of early Amherst College, but Tyler was here just as long and served just as devotedly. His “History of Amherst College” continues to be a very valuable, reliable resource, and he was the author of other, more modest works, including the nicely named “Why Sit Ye Here Idle?” (more…)
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